


When No One Else Was Looking

by imitateslife



Category: Victor Frankenstein (2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 04:45:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9219536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imitateslife/pseuds/imitateslife
Summary: Igor has always been a brave, brilliant, beautiful person, even if Lorelei was the only one to see it. For the first time in their lives, she can finally let him know just how much she has always loved him.





	

Sunlight painted Igor in ivory and gold as morning came. Lorelei watched him breathe beside her – the subtle rise and fall of his chest. He had always been beautiful… so beautiful… but if someone had told her that she would make love to the circus hunchback in a baron’s mansion, she would have laughed. Even the circus fortune teller – a woman Lorelei trusted in the blind, religious way children trusted parents and the devout trusted God – could never have foretold this. And if she had, there was no doubt Lorelei would search her caravan for stray bottles of gin. Life in the circus was predictable. Routine. Each performer had his or her role and you played it until you died or your body broke. Whatever came first.

The day she fell from the trapeze, Lorelei had thought for sure her body was broken or that she would die. They said that your life flashed before your eyes upon near-death experiences, but as she fell from the trapeze all those months ago, Lorelei had seen only the circus tent and blackness. The end, not a beginning. And yet, here she was, lying beside the man she loved. Their bellies were full. They were safe and warm and loved. She had never known such luxuries. Igor certainly never had. 

At times, when Lorelei marveled at her own elevated status, she would pause to think how much his life had changed. She had gone from a rung above street whore on the social ladder to the consort of a baron – a lady of society, hailed by London’s elite as a charming hostess and delightful dancing partner. But Igor… By God, he hadn’t even had a name for the last twenty years. As long as Lorelei had known him – and she couldn’t recall a time when she _hadn’t_ known him – he had been The Hunchback or just one of the circus’ freaks. No one ever called him anything else; no one ever thought to. It seemed so inhumane to Lorelei, though she couldn’t place _why_ , and so she had never called him anything aloud. Sometimes “friend”. 

“Hello!” she would call as she hurried over with her plate of half-fermented fruit and hardened bread to sit with him. “How are you, my friend?”

And he had been her friend – perhaps her only one – back then in the circus. They shared meals and stories, fears and dreams. For her part, she tried to shield him from the insults others hurled at him. Her friend was such a gentle spirit. A survivor, no doubt; anyone who lasted more than a year in Lord Barnaby’s circus was a survivor. But he was gentle. Different from anyone she knew. Sometimes, on late, cold nights, she would watch him draw by lamplight. His hands glided across the paper with the same grace she glided through the air. He was the company’s unofficial doctor, yes, but there was something of an artist in her friend. An artist and… something else. Something she would now call a visionary. His eyes had always been the most beautiful thing about him. They were the clearest blue that put the skies to shame. She wanted to fly in them. She could _soar_ in them, sprout wings under his celestial gaze and feel weightless.

Giddy.

Hopeful.

And then she would see the equestrians with whom she shared a tent – gossips, the lot of them. Girls her own age, who hadn’t the courage to hurl insults or rotted vegetables at The Hunchback, but could chatter the day away about his twisted form and cast smug, scornful looks at Lorelei for spending so much time at his side. She shielded her dear friend from the gossip as best she could, but she also shielded him from the hot, urgent shame that rose in her core when those horseback riders looked at them. He was so beautiful, her brilliant friend… But to even think of pursuing something more with him… It made her feel dirty. She would lie awake in her cot as the other girls spoke of her and her dear friend in vulgarities.

“The way she looks at him,” one girl would say. “It’s disgusting.”

“Sensible girl like Lorelei would never fuck a freak,” another would say defensively. “Not if she knows what’s good for her.”

“Lord Barnaby says her mother was a common whore... Didn’t want her, see? It wouldn’t surprise me if little miss virtue, little miss _sensible_ would fuck any freak for the right price.”

She would lie awake and listen, biting her lip to keep from crying out as tears streamed down her cheeks. She felt so dirty then, so dirty. In the dark, when the other girls slept, Lorelei dreamt of those artist’s hands trembling against her skin, those piercing eyes looking at her like maybe she was magic. She wanted him in some forbidden way. She would never have him. Could never have him. They’d both be shunned. Cast out of the only home they’d ever known. But in the dark, she could dream of lying down with him in the cool grass behind the tents, shushing him as he lowered himself over her. She craved his gentle touch- even imagined that he would know from all his anatomical studies the places to touch that would make her whimper and sigh as she did in the dark of her tent, pretending her hands were his.

It was an impossible fantasy, a dangerous one. One she never spoke of, not to anyone.

Not even to Igor as they lay naked together after making love.

It had not been like her fantasies. Not entirely. No. She’d so often dreamt of sneaking off with him that pulling him into the spare room felt natural – not shy or forbidden. Exciting – there was always the very real possibility someone would come knocking upon the door – but she felt no shame in wanting him. No one could judge them now. A handsome boy and a wealthy girl? What did people care what they did behind closed doors? Baron Bomine certainly did not care. 

“That Straussman,” he’d said once while they sat together over tea. “Good looking boy. Are you two…?”

“We’re friends,” Lorelei replied. A blush crept onto the apples of her cheeks. “We have been since we were children.”

“But you’re nothing more? Pity… If I were twenty years younger, I wouldn’t waste an opportunity with him.”

And she hadn’t. No, she’d led him up the stairs, laughing, drunk off of joy. Her stomach swooped when she looked over her shoulder at him following her up the stairs, down the hall. His sky colored eyes were crinkled up. He was beautiful, beautiful and brilliant. Everything she’d ever wanted and more. So much more. She had never seen her friend so confident, so joyful as he was tonight. The way he’d danced, the way they’d laughed… And then she locked them in a room. The atmosphere changed. It pulsated like a flame in the wind. Throbbed, hot and eager. A feeling she well knew, but never dared-

She wondered if he’d ever felt anything like it before in his life. Had he ever, when he had no name and she had no status, watched her with anything besides a friendly eye? Or, had he, as so many did, discounted himself as a person and refused to feel anything but tender friendship? She wondered if, in this moment, he was surprised. Confusion in his eyes pained her to the core. Didn’t he know that he was the best person she’d ever known? Hadn't she ever told him?

“I don’t know what to do,” he said, shaking his head and breathless.

Her eyes traced his lips – the way they tremored – and his eyes. Those eyes! There was a spark in them that she’d never seen before anywhere except in her dreams. Desire. Wanting. An ache that could not be eased by anything but touch. 

“You’re already doing it,” she whispered, kissing him.

She’d wanted to kiss him before this. Before he was Igor, before he stood as a proper man ought. He was softer than she’d ever realized. Now that his lips were not chapped and coated with paint, his kisses were supple and smooth. Easy to melt into. His hand touched the side of her neck as they laid down in front of the fireplace. The barest feeling of his fingertips made her ache for more. More of him all over her body. Her gown seemed such a cumbersome thing and as kissing fumbled towards love-making she begged him to unfasten her corset. His surgeon’s hands untangled the laces and freed her body so that they lay exposed for one another to see. God, he was beautiful. Smooth skin so fair one could mistake it for marble. He looked at her – all of her, from her wide eyes and parted lips, to her uneven collar bone, to the parts of her that no one else had seen, no one else had touched – and he looked as if he had never seen such a sight, even in all his medical textbooks. Again, he froze and though Lorelei had always been certain that his medical research would have educated him on these matters, she realized that the lead was hers to take. She slithered out of the red sea of her gown and eased him so that he lay on his back. He winced.

“Does it hurt?” she asked. “Your…?”

“No, no,” he insisted. “No. It’s fine. My spine is fine.”

She kissed his lips softly. 

“I want you to be comfortable,” she said. “Are you?”

He nodded. There was a boyish delight, an eagerness in his eyes that she hadn’t anticipated. She bit her lip and straddled him, rocking gently against him. She’d never before done this, but she had seen – who hadn’t? – in the circus. She had seen so much: Nathaniel and the contortionist, pinned against a caravan; Rafferty and painted ladies in every other city. Lord Barnaby and the lead equestrian, even. She had seen and she had dreamt, but nothing had ever felt so good as Igor’s hips canting upwards against hers. He was a quick study and as they writhed together, harder and faster, experimenting and exploring until they were sore and exhausted and sated, Lorelei could only think that he was better than anything she’d ever thought. His fingers traced the swell of her breasts where they were most tender, not with a doctor’s clinical assurance, but with a lover’s awe and trepidation. She did not shush him as she always thought she might. Instead she relished the little sounds he made beneath her, And when her cry rose into the night air, years of pent up desire escaped her lips in a single word: his newfound name. The word she finally had for her beloved. Spent, they curled together so close – old habit from the circus, the only way to keep from freezing to death on cold, December nights – and slept. 

But when morning came, Lorelei watched him sleep. He was not her friend anymore. He was her lover. 

He was not perfect. For his gentle and long fingers, for his bow lips, there was the frizz of his long hair and the withered skin upon his once-injured shoulder. The morning light brought these ugly things into sharp relief against his beauty and Lorelei loved him for it. She always had loved him in spite of his imperfections. _Because_ of them, at times. The way he would speak like a perfect gentleman, even to the cruelest of carnies, but then yelp out a swear when Barnaby kicked him to the ground or when he had a sudden realization and there were no other words than profanities to illustrate his point. She loved him for his endurance of everything that some might call passivity. She loved him for the nights when they shared a flask of noxious gin on the fringes of the circus and he drunkenly told her about all the bones in the human hand, naming them as if he were naming the constellations. She loved him for the days they sat in companionable silence, watching other performers and never needing to say a thing. She loved him in totality. She always had.

Some would say that he was hers. She thought sourly, suddenly of Victor Frankenstein. Of all people! She imagined his hands upon Igor, grasping and hungry. Violent with desire. And how Igor would cave to such demands and agree to be called “his”, if such a claim was staked. It made her sick with jealousy for the briefest of moments, sick with hate. Lorelei could not call Igor “hers” in the same way. He was his own person. No one could own him. But in the night – and in this glorious, golden morning – she could think of him as hers and of herself as his. They belonged to each other as equals. She traced the bare scruff upon his jaw and Igor stirred. She withdrew, but he awoke and propped himself up upon his elbow. 

“What?” he asked, groggy and frantic. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Lorelei murmured. She kissed him slowly. There was no rush to go anywhere. No one was looking for them, surely. There were no practices to be had, nothing pressing. She sighed. “You’re going to think I’m mad… but this is what I always wanted. _Better_.”

Igor cocked his head. He cupped her cheek with his free hand.

“You don’t have to say that,” he said. “Lorelei-“

“Igor, I mean it,” she said. She pressed a hand to his warm chest. Beneath her fingers she could feel his heartbeat.

“I did everything all wrong…” he said. “You deserve-“

“I decide what I deserve,” Lorelei said. “And you did so much right. I’ve never… not with anyone… but I always hoped that one day… there would be someone like you in my life. – I mean, you’ve _always_ been in my life, but _this_ , this is better than anything I could have dreamed. And I… have had some dreams.”

Igor hesitated, but then he nodded. There was something demure about him now that he was awake. The confident grin he wore whil dancing last night had softened. But then it flickered onto his face.

“I never dreamed,” he confessed. “Well. I _dreamed_ , but I never thought that there was a hope for us. I always watched you practice, in the circus. Do you know that? Every chance I got. You were the one beautiful thing in my life, the only person… the only one who ever treated me like a person.”

She kissed him again. 

“You are the best person,” she told him. “My person. And I am yours.”

He kissed her and she could feel the gratitude in his lips. There was an intensity to this kiss, but the need in it was different. She stroked his hair and they eased back to the floor. She felt coated in something warm and glowing. Surely when they left this room, everyone would see a change in her – a change in him, too, she could see the same residue clinging to his skin, the same radiance she felt reflected upon him. Surely everyone would know that they were in love. Their worlds had changed irrevocably, but always they had be – and would be – netted together.

But they didn’t have to leave just yet. They could stay for a while more, wrapped up together, never needing to say a thing.


End file.
